The Unnaturalists

CHAPTER 8

Syrus waited until the next night to return to the trainyard. If this was truly a Cull, the Guard wouldn’t have waited around very long. They would have hurried their catch as quickly as possible to the Lowtown Refinery. But he also knew that a Guard had been lost following him, and while they surely wouldn’t waste time trying to find him, they might at the very least have spies posted around the trainyard just in case he should be foolish enough to return.

And, foolish though it might have been, he went back, because he knew his extended clan would expect it of him. Nothing would be done with the Reed clan’s passenger car until it was determined without a shadow of a doubt that all had been killed or taken. It was his duty as the remaining free member of the clan to dispose properly of the bodies.

He came when the cookfires leaped around the rusting wheels. There was no music and no laughter, and there wouldn’t be for a while. Uncle Gen had been right about it being a long time since the last Cull. Everyone had begun to think perhaps the Cityfolk no longer needed new bodies for their Refineries, that perhaps the clans could finally live in as much peace as they could expect.

Suddenly, Syrus hated them all for being so naive.

At the edge of the trainyard, he heard muted voices inside one of the passenger cars. The Thornishes were a new family, still without a clan, who lived on the edge of Tinkerville; no one knew them very well. A stewpot bubbled over an unattended fire; he guessed perhaps they’d gone inside to find salt or bowls or somesuch. He took none of the stew, but he did steal a shawl and old bloomers from their laundry line. He draped the shawl around his head and neck, then wrapped a branch with the bloomers. He set them alight in the fire and walked off before the Thornishes could find him.

He left whispering silence in his wake as he passed through the trainyard with the burning branch. No one spoke to him or tried to stop him. They all knew why he was here.

Syrus’s heart thundered, sure at any minute he’d be accosted by a Guard. He glanced toward the caved-in roofs of passenger cars and iron engines, searching for ravens, but there were none that he could see. When he came to his family’s former home, he saw Truffler sobbing by the steps.

The hob’s great nose was even larger then usual—swollen and red with his crying. Syrus ignored him and his clutching hands and went up the steps.

The smell was the first thing that hit him. That and the sound of buzzing flies. He held the torch as close to himself as he dared, so that he could only smell the scents of burning cloth and wood, only hear the crackle of fire eating linen.

He stayed longer than he needed in the entryway, looking at all the things still hanging there—the weapons, coats, and other implements left undisturbed by the Guard in their passing. Standing in this entryway, seeing everyone’s things and noting who was in and who wasn’t had always been how he’d known he was home. And yet this would never be his home again.

He took a deep breath, wrapping the shawl tightly around his nose and mouth. Then he stepped in.

A macabre landscape of twisted blankets and bodies spread before him—a foot here, a dead eye gleaming there. Syrus wanted to retch, but his body was entirely empty. He could think of nothing to say, nothing to do that would somehow honor the fallen. He thought of Granny Reed’s stories of roaming, vengeful spirits, and he felt sure that these spirits would haunt him forever. Unless he somehow managed to free those who had been taken to the Lowtown Refinery.

But to do that, he would need help. And to get help from the Manticore, he would need a witch.

Something glittered nearby in the torchlight as he swung it around, something that was neither an eye nor the mirrors some of his uncles had sewed onto their hunting jackets. He stooped and saw the thing clutched in a small, pale hand. The hand of his cousin Amalthea.

He pried the Architect’s summoning stone free from her palm.

And then he yelled curses such as no thirteen-year-old boy should know. He blamed the Refiners and the Empress and her demonic Raven Guard. He blamed the damnable Architects and their magic that had brought this Cull to pass. But most of all he blamed himself.

Syrus backed away from his cousin’s body and stood in the entryway again. He scanned the items that hung there, taking only the few things that he might need—fairy darts, a skinning knife, a hardened gourd canteen.

Then he threw the torch through the door.

He stood with Truffler at a safe distance, watching the train car burn. Other people came to stand nearby. He saw some people wetting the ground or their own cars so that the sparks wouldn’t catch. And then the low mourning chant began. Its call and response sang far above the roaring flames—a testament to the Reed clan, to all its members lost or taken, to the lone boy who remained.

When at last the fire died and his former home was nothing more than a hulk of twisted metal on smoking wheels, Syrus turned his face toward New London. The dark Tower menaced him from its broken hill while the Refineries belched their ugly, green-tinged smoke. But still that secret Heart pulled at him, the promise of the great Dragon resting along the river—Tianlong of the old stories his grandmother would never tell again.

He looked aside at Truffler, who stood wringing his hairy hands next to him.

“You shouldn’t go with me,” Syrus said. “Stay here and work for another family who needs you.”

He started toward the City road, but Truffler was at his heels, grabbing his trousers. “Bad place. Bad,” he said.

“I know,” Syrus said. He squatted down next to the hob. “But the Manticore said I must find her a witch in the City.”

Truffler sighed. He touched his nose. “I smell for you.”

Syrus put his hand on Truffler’s shoulder. “I know you would, my friend. And maybe if it comes to that, I’ll call on you. But the Refiners would light on you in a heartbeat if they could. I’d rather you stay put where you could escape to the Forest, if need be.”

Truffler sighed. He stepped back, tears running in rivulets down his big nose. “Be brave,” he said.

Syrus nodded.

He walked away from the smoking ruin and the little hob beside it, his spine stiff as iron.